Category: Teaser

It’s almost here!

I know Riley fans are going to have one hell of a ride. You can pre-order the title at a discount today, so it’s sitting pretty on your Kindle or Kindle reading app on release day. CLICK HERE

If you’ve gotten this far with Riley and her crew, you know the stakes for survival in the new world are high, love can be found and then lost, and the dead are still hanging around. She’s always been one to hold onto hope, but in her latest journey, Riley realizes that hope can’t save them all…

“Who?” I screamed in his face. “Who was it?”

He tried to answer, but choked instead. I screamed louder, as if that would force the words out of his closed windpipe. Jin had to peel me off the kid, and I didn’t go quietly. I clawed. Kicked. Screamed. Demanding to know who had died on their way out of the compound. Was it Connor? Was it Jacks? Was it Drake? But the boy wouldn’t answer me – he couldn’t – he was on all fours, gasping for air as Jin half-carried and half-shoved me as far away as he could manage. He didn’t release me until my flailing arms hit home, and I struck his jaw with a right hook. After I tripped over a small end table and landed on my ass, Jin fell into the wall that separated the living space from the bathroom.

The roaring in my ears sounded eerily like the popping of the fireplace, and I looked over my shoulder at the spurting fire, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth from biting my tongue. It blended with the sweet aftertaste of Jin’s tea, but I refused to swallow. I spit into the fire, and watched the heat sizzle and smoke over the small wet spot until it was gone, leaving no trace of my blood behind.

One of us was dead, and the kid couldn’t tell me who. The rest were out in these mountains somewhere, looking for me, or frozen already from the cold. There was nothing I could do but sit in the treehouse and wait for the snow to melt. I was going to go crazy weeks before that happened.

Like this:

Happy Tuesday, again! WHIL is right around the corner…releasing later this month. Want another Teaser from the 4th book in the Find Me Series? Read on…

Have you met Jin?

He wasn’t good with people, his father always told him so. His mother was the more philosophical parent. She always reminded him that if you are your own person, friends would find you. As he sat at the window and watched Riley doze in her chair, he wished he knew what to say to calm her, but words would not help the woman. She had yet to mention any details about how it was that she ended up half-dead in the woods, covered in dried blood that wasn’t all hers, and he wouldn’t ask for them. It was not his story to tell.

Curiosity sure was a nag, though.

To settle his mind, he refocused on the view outside the window, at the shadows below their sanctuary that moved around the base of the evergreens trying to find the ones that didn’t belong. Jin had been watching the woods for weeks, more so over the last few days. He knew when Riley had entered them because the normal bird chatter shifted to more of a whisper, more of a warning. Just like they were now. Present, but quiet. Like Riley’s mood…

Like this:

Happy Tuesday – here’s a teaser from the upcoming 4th book in the Find Me Series, ‘Where Hope is Lost’:

“Have you slept?” Ashlyn asked.

He didn’t turn to look at her, but shrugged again. “I sleep when I need it.”

“And what, you never need it?”

When he glared over his shoulder, he found her closer to his seat than expected, sipping from one of the mugs. She leaned against the wall, just two feet next to the oversized chair he lounged on. Drake didn’t like her this close, where he could smell the sweet and unidentifiable hint of her perfume. He didn’t like any of them in his space. To say it made him uncomfortable was an understatement.

Like this:

Yay! It’s time to show off FM4 – I do hope you like the new look of the series, and find the 4th book as beautiful as I do! Many thanks to Elizabeth Mackey Graphic Design for her work on the rebrand. Please scroll down to take a peek at the new book and enjoy a snippet. Want to chat without others who love the Find Me series? Join the FB Event party for the cover reveal over HERE and check out the FM4 Giveaway! Happy Monday!

I wanted him to stop talking. To just close his mouth and forget everything he was going to say so I didn’t have to hear the words. He could tuck it away into the back of his mind, I knew he could, because I’d done that with so many things already. But, as if playing a cruel joke on me, he wouldn’t shut up. It’s like he couldn’t.

At one point, I tuned him out, because it began to replay in my mind. I didn’t need his account of my first feverish night in his care, and the sordid tale of my abduction and torture through raging fits of insanity, because I was the one who had lived through the real thing. I was the one who had gone wild. Turned savage, like a caged animal freed after a lifetime of abuse and neglect. I was the one who wandered off into the woods, running away from the ghosts of the dead and the living. Running until I collapsed not far from Jin’s doorstep. He took me in, nursed me back to health, and shared his wisdom, though he didn’t realize it. He’d become a friend.

I felt myself fall backwards, hitting the snow-covered rail with my lower back, and I wondered, for just a moment, if I could fly. Would it be so terrible to die? To let go of the anger, the hate, to accept the pain as it was, a never-ending storm of doubt and grief. I could do it, I thought. To be with my kids again, wherever they were, I could do anything.

But the drawl of Jin’s calming voice pulled me forward, back to the cabin porch we stood shivering on. Back to the frozen pines, and the secrets hidden in the rings of their cores. Away from the jar and its contents. I couldn’t be angry at him, not for repeating my own words, so I did all I could. I let some of it go, some of that grief and pain that so desperately wanted to ruin the good that was left in me. I passed it on to the breeze, and let it drift down the valley with the fading sun. Because I didn’t want to carry it any more.

For the first time since the night he found me in the woods, I let Jin hold me. The two of us couldn’t change what had happened, and we couldn’t prevent the next storm from coming, but our hearts were still beating. We were alive. As we held each other under the first twinkling stars of the early evening, I reminded myself that life hurt because it was worth living; the best things in life were always worth fighting for. Through all the pain and loss, there was also love and friendship. And despite what I’d been through, I still had a family somewhere out there, searching for me. I refused to lose them too.

Like this:

The room smelled faintly of dirty cloth diapers and spit up, but he’d gone nose-blind to the odor weeks ago. As he stared up at the varnished ceiling beams, Jacks listened to the baby sleep. For two days, he’d been trying to do the math to figure out exactly how many weeks old she was. He was disgusted that he didn’t know his own child’s age. The day before, he finally picked a number – sixteen weeks – but no, as he stared at the damn ceiling, that didn’t seem right. She was already rolling over, trying to sit up. Did babies her age sit up, he wondered. Would she be crawling soon? He scratched at his beard and added a month. Twenty weeks. That sounded right, too.

“Fuck,” he whispered into the room.

A gust of snow slammed against the window, and he sprang up on an elbow, expecting to see Lily stir herself awake, but she stayed asleep, dreaming whatever dreams babies had. He flopped back down onto the lumpy pillow and rolled onto his side so he could see the edge of her hotel-standard crib. He’d been thinking about her mother a lot. Ana would know how old her damn kid was, even if she was a bitch the entire time he knew her. Moms were good with that kind of stuff. He cursed again and punched the pillow into a more comfortable shape.

His eyes had finally closed from exhaustion when something in the hall broke, and bodies began slamming into the walls. At first Jacks thought he had immediately slipped into a nightmare, so he rubbed his face, hoping the noises would fade away. But when the dog began to wildly bark, and Lily woke up screaming shortly after, he realized whatever was happening in the hall was real. He launched out of the bed and across his room, and pressed his ear to the cold door. His heart thudded in his chest, but not for his safety, for Lily’s. She was too young to survive without him, and after losing Win, Jacks was acutely aware of how important his role as a father truly was…